Editor's Choice

Sign of the times

Rock and roll always has had something of a generation gap, with lots of parents unable to understand/tolerate that noise their kids are listening to. But this wistful piece about a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame notes that times have changed.
Writing in The New York Times, Dave Caldwell says his family trip to Cleveland to visit the Rock Hall reinforced one thing: Its mostly parents in their 40s and 50 who enjoy the place, with their children sort of tagging behind good-naturedly, indulging them.
He recalls looking with something approaching awe at boxes containing original reel-to-reel master tapes by the Doors.
My two sons looked at me as if theyd gotten the general idea: a reel-to-reel tape was a relic from an iPod-less past, Mr. Caldwell writes. It was not the only moment during our two-hour stroll through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum that I felt as if my salad days were long gone. My boys were humoring me.
There were certain displays in the museum the kids seemed to enjoy. One was the pencil-and-crayon drawings of college football players that Jimi Hendrix created as a 14-year-old.
But most of what we saw, I quickly discovered, might as well have been stone tools from the ice age, he says.
Even so, Mr. Caldwell concludes on a heartwarming note of family bonding, even if the subject is a little morbid.
As grim and frustrating as it was for me at times, our trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had its merits, he writes. Not long after I explained the reel-to-reel tapes, (his son) Ben found Jim Morrisons death certificate and read it closely. I didnt know he was so young, Ben said softly.
They put in the Doors CD on the way home, and his sons, maybe for the first time, listened to it and heard a young man sing.